Girls Who Code: Bring CS to Girls Across Country

We’re so excited to announce expansion of the Girls Who Code Clubs program to 49 states across the country, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico in the 2016/2017 school year. Your support is helping us scale this incredible program to meet demand across the country and to meet girls where they are in their own communities.

While the Summer Immersion Program will continue to be our flagship program, we believe our path to scale and to closing the gender gap in tech is through our Girls Who Code Clubs Program. We believe our Clubs efforts will help us move quickly to dramatically expand the reach of our programs and to ensure that our students persist in computer science and get the support they need to succeed.

In the next year, we’ll triple our free after-school Clubs Program to 1500 clubs in every state in the country. So far this year, we’ve already successfully launched close to 900!

Through our Clubs program, we’ll provide access to GWC programming at scale and serve tens of thousands of girls. While girls’ interest in computer science declines over time, the greatest drop-off happens in middle and high school. We call this the “middle school cliff” -- the period in middle and high school when girls’ interest in computer science declines dramatically at the same time that boys’ interest grows. GWC Clubs intervene at this critical time and hook girls’ interest.

Clubs are free and open to 6th-12th graders. Hosted at schools, libraries, and community centers, Clubs help girls learn to use computer science to impact their community and provide a sisterhood of supportive peers and role models. During the year, Clubs students will work together and individually on a CS Impact Project, where they will learn to use computer science to solve a problem relevant to their school and community.

Our Clubs model is enormously successful. 75% of our Clubs students report being more likely to take a computer science class after participating in a Club, and 65% said they were more likely to major or minor in computer science in college because of GWC.

Thank you for your support! Your investment is bringing Girls Who Code closer each day to gender parity in the tech workforce. And that’s especially true right now, as our Summer Immersion Programs are in full swing across the country, and we’re gearing up to launch an unprecedented number of Girls Who Code Clubs this fall! With your help, Girls Who Code will have reached over 40,000 girls with over 750,000 hours of computer science education by the end of 2016.

Our Summer Immersion Program has grown in size since our first program in 2012: we’re operating 78 programs of 20 girls each in 11 markets! We’re working with our amazing partners to bring over 285,000 hours of computer science education to over 1,500 high school girls.

Girls in our Summer Immersion Programs are learning mobile app development, web design, robotics, and the theories behind coding and creating their own projects, from games to arduinos. Just last week, our New York City Summer Immersion Program participants came together for the All NYC Field Trip, hosted by Aceenture, which included a full day of exciting speakers and an riveting Augmented Reality demonstration.

At the same time, our Clubs Program team is gearing up for the 2016-2017 school year with a goal to start over 1500 Clubs nationwide! Since we started our first Clubs fewer than three years ago, we’ve been blown away by the high demand for our computer science education services across the country and around the world. We can’t wait to continue to grow the Clubs Program to serve every girl who wants to learn to code!

With our Clubs and Summer Immersion Programs growing so quickly, we’re excited to be able to share our newest data: An unbelievable 90% of our current Summer Immersion Program graduates are majoring or planning to major in computer science or a related field in college, and 77% said they wouldn’t have done so without Girls Who Code. Out of our thousands of Clubs students in grades 6-12, 75% plan to continue studying computer science after their Girls Who Code experience.

2016 has been a year of explosive growth for Girls Who Code, and we cannot wait to see how community grows!

As we look ahead to another year of major expansion in 2017, we want you to be a part of it! Give today to continue supporting us as we close the gender gap in computer science.

Together, we’re creating a movement that is changing the face of technology. We’re looking forward to continuing to work with you!

Girls Who Code is thrilled to announce we are teaming up with a record number of major companies and philanthropic foundations for our annual Summer Immersion Program and providing $1 million in scholarships for girls to attend. In all, the companies will host 78 free programs serving 1560 girls, a 37 percent increase in programs from last year. Our 7-week program offers rising 11th and 12th grade girls 300+ hours of intensive instruction in web development and design, robotics, and mobile development with mentorship and exposure to top female engineers and entrepreneurs.

While the Summer Immersion Program is a 100% free program, we understand some applicants may depend heavily upon summer employment. To encourage girls who would normally need to work over the summer, and girls who would need transportation support, Girls Who Code offers scholarships for those students who depend heavily upon summer employment and would normally need to work to support themselves or their family, as well as, students who will need transportation assistance during the program. We need YOUR support to pay for lost wages and travel costs so that even more girls can participate in our 2016 Summer Immersion Programs. Our programs educate and equip girls nationwide — giving them the hard and soft skills they need to succeed in tech jobs.

Girls Who Code is thrilled to announce we are teaming up with a record number of major companies and philanthropic foundations for our annual Summer Immersion Program and providing $1 million in scholarships for girls to attend. In all, the companies will host 78 free programs serving 1560 girls, a 37 percent increase in programs from last year. Our 7-week program offers rising 11th and 12th grade girls 300+ hours of intensive instruction in web development and design, robotics, and mobile development with mentorship and exposure to top female engineers and entrepreneurs. The scholarship money will go towards helping girls make up for lost wages due to program participation and transportation costs. Scholarship recipients are determined based on financial need.

What began as one program for twenty girls in New York City in 2012, our organization has grown into a national movement, engaging partners nationwide in technology, telecommunications, finance, animation, fashion, gaming and other sectors. Our programs have taught over 10,000 girls computer science across 42 States to-date. Last fall, we announced the formation of a national alumni network and commitments from more than 50 top companies to share job opportunities and internships with Girls Who Code graduates as part of our #HireMe campaign.

Thanks for your ongoing support of the Girls Who Code movement! Together, we can give girls the computer science education they deserve.

We're excited to announce that last week, Girls Who Code launched our Alumni Network and our new #HireMe pledge at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. In the coming months, we will roll out exciting new features to support our alumni as they select colleges, win scholarships, apply for internships, and begin their careers.

The #HireMe pledge is a great opportunity for companies to commit to recruiting, hiring, and coaching Girls Who Code alumni and to start closing the gender gap in tech. Our alumni couldn't be more excited about the chance to work for some of these amazing organizations, including AT&T, Prudential, Adobe, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo!, and more. We're excited to share that over 30 companies have already joined the #HireMe campaign!

The Alumni Network launch is another step forward in Girls Who Code's thrilling 2015 journey. Our partners hosted 57 incredible Summer Immersion Programs in ten markets this year. We have reached 40 states with our almost 500 Clubs across the country this fall. And by the end of this year, our programs will have reached over 10,000 girls since our founding in 2012.

With the Alumni Network, we're making a promise to each of those 10,000 girls that Girls Who Code and our supporters will stand by her as she enters and succeeds in the technology workforce.

Thank you again for your partnership in the Girls Who Code movement. We couldn’t do it without you!

About Project Reports

Project Reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you will get an e-mail when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports via e-mail without donating.

WARNING: Javascript is currently disabled or is not available in your browser. GlobalGiving makes extensive use of Javascript and will not function properly with Javascript disabled. Please enable Javascript and refresh this page.